It's official, this remarkable sunspot area that rotated across the solar surface during October was the largest in over 25 years.It produced many M and X class solar flares but no CME’s thank goodness; I say that because it was an extremely powerful object! Also this area may not be finished with yet, at the moment it’s transiting on the farside of the Sun, but by mid November it could be back, so stay tuned…. Please go to the Solar Dynamics Observatory home page and SDO’s blog to read all about how the solar space telescope viewed this amazing sunspot group and to see some incredible movies of the solar flares at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/573http://sdoisgo.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/what-active-region.html If you want to keep up with the current astronomical happenings like this spectacular event, then please visit the spaceweather.com web site at http://www.spaceweather.com/

It’s the perfect place to visit, because the astronomical community post there images here nearly immediately as things are unfolding…at times like these, it’s very exciting :-) Please find below a montage of images from the 20th to the 27th October as sunspot AR2192 rotated across the surface of the Sun. I did take images for the 29th but the sunspot area was really foreshortened on the western edge with not a lot of detail to see. I was really hoping it might have produced a prominence on the limb as it said goodbye…but no such luck!